


Discovery

by somewhereelse



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-24
Updated: 2017-04-24
Packaged: 2018-10-23 16:46:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10723287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somewhereelse/pseuds/somewhereelse
Summary: Oliver gets in his feelings.





	Discovery

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes I do highbrow things like learn about Syrian poets. Then I do lowbrow things like use it for CW fanfiction.
> 
> When I love you,  
> A new language springs up.  
> New cities, new countries discovered.  
> -Nizar Qabbani

It shocks him the first time Felicity anticipates his request, answering the question before he can finish asking it. Her smug tone of voice somehow tells him more about her than his extremely thin file or the dozens of babbles that have come before. There’s more to her than a desire to do good in the world, as noble as that is. This is a woman who thrives on competition, on challenge, on, to be crass, the thrill of the chase.

This woman is his equal.   

He meets her expectant stare with a faint smirk of approval. Abruptly, he worries it’s too much like his look of dismissive disinterest and he can’t afford to distance her now. To his unending surprise, she recognizes the expression for what it is and turns back to the next task on her computers, a lingering air of accomplishment emanating from her.

* * *

The next night doesn’t run nearly as smoothly. Felicity is a ball of frustration by the time he manages to sneak into Verdant’s basement. He makes the mistake of hovering over her shoulder as she works, and she literally snarls at his urging to look faster. By the time she _aggressively_  whirls her chair around, he’s made a tactical retreat to his arrow case. With nothing but a firm glare, Felicity confines him to the training area.

His foot doesn’t step off the mats until she expressly calls him over, and Oliver ignores Diggle’s knowing look of amusement. As if the other man wouldn’t do the same if Lyla—

_Oh._

* * *

Her hands are gentle on him. It’s a sensation he hasn’t felt in years. The women he’s slept with handled him proprietarily, the doctors and Diggle clinically, his family with fragility. Sporadic rough edges on the pads of her fingers catch on the uneven scar tissue littering his torso, and he fights to not suck in a telling breath.

Belatedly, he realizes they must be typing callouses because what else could they be? They’re certainly not from a bow and arrow or manual labor. Her keyboard is both her weapon of choice and life’s blood, he reminds himself. He’s seen first-hand the destruction she can wreak with letters and a numerical keypad.

After carefully pressing the tape into place, her touch lingers at the edges. He knows she doesn’t mean it sexually, only as a gesture of comfort. But it would take a hit to the balls for his dick to get that message. He steps away reluctantly, to shrug into his gray hoodie, and she lets him go with a concerned frown.

* * *

She speaks in what sounds like gibberish and riddles, her bright eyes inviting him to join her world. Felicity is a proud, card-carrying member of the nerd brigade, no reference too obscure, no guest star too obsolete. Even Diggle has started to follow along with an unapologetic eagerness for marathon nights.

Oliver rejects every offer, sometimes out of hand, sometimes with a shoddily crafted excuse. Diggle’s disapproval troubles his mind, but Felicity’s disappointment weighs on his soul. She wants so very badly to be his resting place, as he has offered to be hers, but he cannot allow it.

She is not for him, and he knows better than to tempt fate. Until he can't help himself.

* * *

The days are long in the best ways, and the weeks are short in the worst ways. He learns to anticipate every moment so that he can appreciate, not dread, them. Each day is a lazy progression of spur-of-the-moment decisions and careless yet fascinating touch. Each night is a tidal wave of sensation they’re only too eager to drown in. The weeks blur together in a haze that he tries his hardest to distinguish.

As he’s long suspected, her skin is unmarred, save for her ‘took a bullet for Sara’ scar, which is perfect in its own way. He dedicates himself to discovering her with all the focus he lacked as a student. She is on an advanced course, having the benefit and torture of years of sight and care. Where he fumbles, overcome with options, she is direct and sure, a decisive tactician on a mission to dismantle his defenses. It’s almost embarrassing how easily she takes him apart.

He is just beginning to comfortably articulate the depths of his feelings for her, and to receive her certainty in return, when they are dragged back to the real world. He goes, mentally kicking and screaming. He has yet to bind her to him, and him to her, with commitments that will endure beyond this utopia they’ve created together.

* * *

It’s the absence of touch these days. Both his and hers. She can still reach out, tap him with a finger, even though the phantom sensation lingers long after she’s withdrawn. But it’s not the same easy, familiar touch as when they were only friends and partners.

He must have better self-control than she does, withhold entirely. Because he knows that after one touch he won’t be able to withdraw, not like she does seemingly so easily. It would escalate— _he_ would escalate it—quickly and without warning. But they would regret it.

_No._

He would regret that it wouldn’t bring them back to each other; she would regret it entirely. So the space between them remains, speaking a language he doesn’t care to learn.

* * *

Their condition worsens.

Contrary to popular belief, he is not oblivious but painfully and acutely aware of it. When she is present, less and less often, his expression involuntarily contorts as he tries and fails to know her mind. It makes his head ache and his physical body tense in ways that are more and more apparent.

She is stubbornly closed off, a puzzle not even Dig can approach. He wants to believe that she is capably handling herself, but with how eagerly she had thrown herself into their relationship, just as he had, he is terrified of how she may be drowning. Still, he has lost his place and right to ask, and her deflection skills are as sharp as ever, frustrating and depressing him in equal measure.

The silence grows as he tries to forget everything he had so recently and greedily explored.

* * *

He’d like to say they come back together easily. As comforting and stimulating as it is to once again have her with him, voluntarily, without the threat of physical harm, it’s not quite the same. She doesn’t settle in his arms the same, or maybe he no longer holds her the same. Their shapes have changed, more mentally and emotionally than physically, and there are cracks exposing new light.

But they persist despite the growing pains. Because that is all this is. Evidence that they have grown, and grown apart, but have chosen to grow with each other once more, again, always. They are each other’s to learn and discover, and he is confident in their abilities.


End file.
